Political Integration and Procedural Convergence in the European Union

Abstract

I would like to both congratulate the NYU Law School for organizing this Conference in Villa La Pietra, Florence and thank the School for extending to me this invitation to participate. I am also grateful to the eminent colleagues for providing us, in the past three days, with such distinguished contributions as to the modern function and the future fate of civil procedure, coming as it were from both within and outside the traditional procedural field. The mission entrusted to me comes under the majestic denomination of 'Procedural harmonization in Europe'. Twenty years ago this subject would have never been on the agenda of a conference. Procedural harmonization across national borders was neither relevant nor feasible; and Europe as such, representing either a geographical or a political area, would not have added any meaningful parameter to the discussion. But then two things of major importance happened: the first was the development of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities under the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters; the second event was the adoption of the 1987 Single European Act which, among other things, inserted Article lOOa to the Treaty on the European Union, under Part Three, Title V, Chapter 3 on 'Approximation of Laws'. They both had a profound impact on procedural harmonization in Europe. However, before dealing in more detail with these manifestations of the new trend, one cannot ignore the impressive influence exercised on the common laws of Europe by the case-law of the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights under Article 6 of the 1950 Rome Convention on the safeguard of human rights and fundamental liberties, which considers the fair administration of justice as an enforceable right of any citizen against the state in its capacity as a dispenser of judicial protection and asks, in the first place, the European Court of Human Rights to specify and develop this